Alberta Education’s allegations of financial mismanagement by a private Cold Lake Christian school and the home-schooling association it contracts are defamatory and laden with “partial truths,” says a statement posted online Wednesday.

“We are extremely disappointed with yesterday’s sudden decision made by (Education Minister) Minister David Eggen. It will have a dramatic and negative impact on the over 3,500 students and families whose education has now been interrupted,” the Trinity Christian School Association board said in a short email Wednesday.

Infuriated about Eggen’s decision to pull accreditation and public funds from the school, which has 13 classroom students and 3,491 registered home school students, some home-schooling supporters vented online, calling the decision ideological and political.

Calgary commentator Adam Soos started an online petition to reinstate Trinity Christian’s accreditation, which had garnered about 1,150 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.

“David Eggen has been targeting Christian education and home-schooling since he came into office. A critical spectator would have to surmise that the revocation of accreditation has more to do with personal politics than the financial accountability of the association,” Soos wrote in the petition’s description.

In an interview, Soos said Eggen’s move was heavy-handed for the degree of alleged mismanagement. It has sparked fear among other religious schools and home-schooling societies they could be under attack, he said.

If the claims are legitimate, Eggen should call a public inquiry, he said.

For more than two decades, Trinity Christian School Association has subcontracted Wisdom Home Schooling of Derwent, Alta., to run its home-schooling program. With families involved from High Level to Lethbridge, it is the largest privately run such association in Alberta, with a third of the province’s students who are home schooled.

All parents who home school their children must register with a public or private board of their choice, which sends teachers to check on their lesson plans twice a year, and reimburses them for educational expenses.

After noticing irregularities in its spring audited financial statements, Alberta Education asked for more information and received a “less than fulsome” reply, said Brad Smith, executive director of financial services for the provincial ministry.

Financial experts paid three visits to the organizations during the summer, reviewing their books, board meeting minutes, lease agreements, bank statements and other documents going back three years.

The resulting report, handed over to the minister a few weeks ago, listed eight ways Trinity Christian was failing to comply with provincial law. Although schools can contract services, Trinity Christian, not Wisdom, should have overseen the expense of public money and housed students’ records, the report said.

Although they aren’t named, two families make up the senior ranks of both organizations, the review found.

The families, who were approving each other’s salaries and expenses with no oversight from Trinity Christian’s board, took home a combined $2.8 million during the past three years, the report said.

Taxpayer money was used to buy alcohol, gifts, gift cards, pizza, parties, babysitting costs and funeral expenses. Reviewers found cases where employees and board members double-dipped on mileage and travel expenses.

While public school boards in Alberta spend between four and six per cent of their budgets on administration, those costs made up 32 per cent of Wisdom’s expenses.

The report said Wisdom paid more than $100,000 a year for head office space — about 10 times the going rate — at Lone Spruce Farm near Derwent, Alta. The report redacted the name of the farm owner, but the phone number for the farm is the same as the one for Wisdom administrator, Ken Noster’s home.

Noster refused comment when contacted Wednesday by The Canadian Press.

Trinity Christian also used public dollars to build a $560,000 facility on private land, which it sold for $1, then began leasing back the space, year-round, for $900 a month, the government report said.

A strict and unnecessary deadline for parents to claim home-schooling expenses also led Wisdom to improperly hold back $988,000 that should have gone to parents, the report found.

An examination of how Wisdom handled GST claims prompted the government to forward the information to the Canada Revenue Agency. It has also filed a report with RCMP.

“It was incumbent upon us to stop the flow of money to that particular organization,” Eggen said Wednesday in Calgary.

In its written statement, the Trinity Christian board said it “intends to defend its interests in this matter,” but did not specify if that involved taking legal action. The board would not comment further.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Wisdom urged families to wait before registering their child in another school or home-schooling association. It also issued brief rebuttals to some of the claims, saying it was Alberta Education that recommended Trinity Christian contract out home-schooling services in 1997, and that all expenses are meticulously recorded and tracked.

When asked if the government crackdown might appear as an attack on Christian education in Alberta, Eggen said, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Smith, of the ministry, said the faith of the school was never part of the discussion about the minister’s concerns.

“My job is to ensure that public money is being spent properly,” Eggen said. “If there is a (discrepancy), then I need to act on that. I think that the vast majority of Albertans would concur.”

While interim Liberal leader David Swann praised Eggen for taking action after learning of the alleged mismanagement, the Wildrose said in a statement the Opposition would be closely reviewing documents in the case.

“It’s vital that we are always vigilant in how taxpayer resources are being handled,” Wildrose education critic Mark Smith said.

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